“Yes, certainly. Many men were in the king's chamber then. Wulfhun and Wihthelm. And Edrich the king's thane. But Edrich was killed by the pagan—was killed in the great battle, and so was Wulfhun. And Wihthelm has since died of the lung-sickness. Nevertheless, things are as I say!” Leofwin ended defiantly, glaring round him at the others in the court: guards, attendants, his accuser, others waiting for their cases to be heard and decided.
Shef closed his one eye for a moment, remembering a far-off evening of peace in the fen with Edrich, not so very far from here in space. So that was what had happened to him. It might have been guessed.
He opened it again and stared fixedly at Leofwin's accuser. “Why,” he said gently, “why does what King Edmund decided seem to you unjust in this case? Or do you deny that what this man says is what the king decided?”
The accuser, another middle-aged thane of the same stamp as his opponent, blanched visibly as the jarl's piercing gaze fell on him. This was the man, all Norfolk knew, who had begun as a thrall in Emneth. Who had been the last Englishman ever to speak to the martyred king. Who had appeared—God only knew how—as leader of the pagans. Had dug up the hoard of Raedwald. Defeated the Boneless One himself. And somehow had gained the friendship and support of Wessex as well. Who could tell how all that had come about? Dog's name or no, he was a man too strange to lie to.
“No,” said the second thane. “I do not deny that was what the king decided, and I agreed to it as well. But when it was agreed, the understanding behind the decision was this: That after ten years' time the land in question should revert from Leofwin to my grandson, whose father was also killed by the pagans. That is to say, by the—by the men from the North. In the state in which it was in the beginning! But what this man has done”—indignation replaced caution in his voice—“what Leofwin has done ever since is to ruin it! He has cut the timber and planted no more, he has let the dykes and the drains go to ruin, he has turned ploughland into a watermeadow for hay. The land will be worth nothing at the end of his lease.”
“Nothing?”
The complainant hesitated. “Not as much as before, lord jarl.”
Somewhere outside a bell rang, a sign that the dooms-giving was over for the day. But this case must be decided. It was a hard one, as the court had heard already at tedious length, with debts and evasions of them going back for generations, and all the parties in the case related to each other. Neither of the men present today was of much consequence. Neither had seemed of special note to King Edmund, which was why they had been allowed to live on their estates when better men, like Edrich, had been called to service and to death. Still, they were Englishmen of rank, whose families had lived in Norfolk for generations: the sort of people who had to be won over. It was a good sign that they had come to the new jarl's court for judgement.
“This is my doom,” said Shef. “The land shall remain with Leofwin for the rest of his ten-year lease.” Leofwin's red face brightened into a beam of triumph.
“But he shall render an account of his gains each year to my thane at Lynn, whose name is—”
“Bald,” said a black-robed figure standing by a writing-desk to Shef's right.
“Whose name is Bald. At the end of the ten years, if the gain on the property seems more than is reasonable to Bald, Leofwin shall either pay the extra gain for the whole ten years to the grandson in this case, or else he shall pay a sum to be fixed by Bald, equal in value to the worth the land has lost during his stewardship. And the choice shall be made by the grandfather, here present today.”
One face lost its beam, the other brightened. Then both faces took on an identical expression of anxious calculation. Good, thought Shef. Neither is altogether happy. So they will respect my decision.
He rose. “The bell has struck. The dooms-giving is over for today.” A babble of protest, men and women pushing forward from the waiting ranks.
“It will begin again tomorrow. You have your tally-sticks? Show them as you enter and cases will be heard in proper order.” Shef's voice rose strongly above the babble.
“And all mark this! In the court of the Way there is neither Christian nor pagan, neither Wayman nor Englishman. See—I bear no pendant. And Father Boniface here”—he pointed to the black-robed scribe—“priest though he is, he bears no cross. Justice here does not depend on faith. Mark it and tell it. Now go. The hearing is over.”
The doors at the back of the room swung open. Attendants began to urge the disappointed litigants outside into the spring sunshine. Another, the hammer-sign stitched neatly onto his gray tunic, waved the two disputants of the last case over toward Father Boniface, to see the jarl's doom written out twice and witnessed, one copy to remain in the jarl's scriptorium, the other to be torn carefully in two and divided between the litigants, so that neither could present a forgery at some future court.
Through the rear doors there stalked a massive figure, head and shoulders above the people pushing out, in mail and cloak, but unarmed. Shef felt the lonely gloom of judgement suddenly lighten.
“Brand! You are back! You come just at the right moment, when I am free to talk.”
Shef felt his hand gripped in one the size of a quart tankard, saw his own beaming smile answered.
“Not quite, lord jarl. I came two good hours ago. Your guards would not let me through, and with all those halberds waving and never a word of Norse among the lot of them I had not the heart to argue.”
“Hah! They should—No. My orders are to let no one interrupt court of doom except for news of war. They did right. But I am sorry I did not think to make an exception for you. I would have liked you to attend the court and say what you thought of it.”
“I heard.” Brand jerked a thumb behind him. “The head of your guards there was a catapulteer and knew me, though I did not know him. He brought me good ale—excellent ale, after a sea-voyage, to wash out the salt— and told me to listen through the door.”
“And what did you think?” Shef turned Brand about and strolled with him through the now-cleared doorway into the courtyard outside. “What did you think of the jarl's assembly?”
“I am impressed. When I think of what this place was like four months ago—mud everywhere, warriors snoring on the floor for lack of beds, never a kitchen in sight and no food to cook in it. And now. Guards. Chamberlains. Bakeries and brewhouses. Woodwrights fixing shutters and gangs painting everything that doesn't move. Men to ask your name and business. And
Then Brand frowned and looked about, lowered his enormous voice to an unpracticed whisper. “Shef—lord jarl, I should say. One thing. Why all these blackrobes? Can you trust them? And what in the name of Thor is a jarl doing, a lord of warriors, listening to a couple of muttonheads arguing about drains? You'd be better off shooting catapults. Or in the forge even.”
Shef laughed, looking across at the massive silver buckle holding together his friend's cloak, the bulging purse on his sword-belt, the ornamental waist-chain of linked silver coins.
“Tell me, Brand, how did your trip home go? Were you able to buy all you meant to?”
Brand's face took on a hucksterish look of caution. “I put some money in safe hands. Prices are high in Halogaland, and folk are mean. Still, when I hang up my axe for good, it may be there is some small farm for me to retire to in my old age.”
Shef laughed again. “With your share of all our winnings, in good silver, you must have bought up half the county for your relatives to look after.”
This time Brand grinned too. “I did pretty well, I admit. Better than ever in my life before.”
“Well, let me tell you about the blackrobes. What none of us has ever realized is the money the stay-at- homes have. The wealth in a whole county, a rich county of England, not a poor stony one in Norway where you come from. Tens of thousands of men, all tilling the soil and raising sheep and trimming wool and keeping bees and cutting timber and smelting iron and raising horses. More than a thousand square miles. Maybe a thousand thousand acres. All those acres must pay something to me, to the jarl, if it is only the war-tax, or bridge-and-road money.
“Some of them pay everything. I took all Church land into my own possession. Some of it I gave at once to the freed slaves who fought for us, twenty acres a man. Wealth to them—but a fleabite compared to the whole. Much I leased out straightaway, to the rich men of Norfolk, at low rates, for ready money. Those who got it will not want to see the Church come back. Much I kept in my own hand, for the jarldom. In future it will make money for me, to hire workers and warriors.
“But I could not have done it without the blackrobes, as you call them. Who could keep all this land, all these goods, all these leases, in his head? Thorvin knows how to write in our letters, but few others. Suddenly there were
